First up is one of the only two humans in the core cast, a low-ranking member of the cruise ship's bridge crew. Something like second assistant redundant navigator. He's a gregarious sort of fellow with almost no responsibility whatsoever before the accident. Like any sailor, he has an appreciation of booze and women. He dreams of captaining his own ship someday, but knows he'll have to work his way up through the ranks the hard way to manage it. In the meantime, while he's at the bottom of the ladder, he's having a good time.

Next comes Willy, a Gillig and the only one I've named. He works as a steward/waiter/towelboy on the cruise ship. He is a sort of furry humanoid frog. He's small and clumsy, but very quick. He and the sailor described above are friends, spending much of their downtime playing cards together, at which Willy consistently, deliberately loses. The Gillig are often employed as servants and given diminutive nicknames like Willy, Timmy, or Petey. They get no respect.

Third, we have the man who owns the boat. He is immensely wealthy by his society's standards, which are pretty high. He's the CEO and majority stockholder of a corporation that controls the majority of the arable land and mineral wealth on two planets, owns the cruise line, and has several other interests. He is nonhuman. The only thing I have decided so far about his race is that the two genders have radically different appearances, so that they don't appear to be the same species. I don't know if that will ever become important. There's a name for it; I keep wanting to say "genomorphic" but that isn't right. He and his wife are on this trip because she insisted on a vacation.

Following him we have his lifemate, a female of the same species. As I said, by looking at them you wouldn't even guess they were biologically compatible, never mind husband and wife. She is a socialite, concerned with knowing the right people and saying the right things. She is having an affair with our next contestant, with her husband's knowledge and consent because it leaves him more time to tend to his business dealings. The species is not monogamous.

The next person is an actress and singer who was booked to perform in the ship's lounge during the trip. Technically an employee rather than a passenger, she has a lot of free time. She is a nonhuman with feline features. Her species evolved very strong mating signals. Among themselves, this is no big deal; they're used to it. On the other hand, alien races tend to overreact when confronted with their charms, in a gender-specific way. Men go ga-ga over the women, and vice versa. Not every race reacts the same way or to the same extent. Some are even repelled. Being a bi-gendered species helps. Enough races respond favorably to give them a leg up in the entertainment industry, or any career involving charisma and manipulation of others. It's a matter of body language, word choice, and tone of voice. A sub-harmonic in the sound of their speech is a necessary but not sufficient component of this effect. They can inhibit these displays, but it is neither easy nor comfortable. This particular singer longs to find someone who can see past her exaggerated desirability and love her for what she is underneath.

The next person isn't quite a person. He's a bug-eyed monster. He is distinctly non-humanoid, with tentacles and an odd assortment of orifices, eyes on stalks, the works. He's about four feet tall. He is also an absolute genius. In the couple hundred years he has been alive, he has gotten the equivalent of doctorate degrees in physics, biology, history, archaeology, philosophy, literature, pretty much every field of study. His species has a much higher oxygen requirement than humans, to power their extra-large brains. He must carry around his own supplemental oxygen at all times, or he gets groggy and dizzy, and falls over, not unlike being drunk. He was not actually on board to enjoy the cruise. It was the first ship he could find to take him to where he would rendezvous with another ship, which would take him to an archaeological dig, where something incredible has recently been found for which his expertise is needed.

Finally, we have the other human. She is a college student taking the cruise with two of her friends (who don't survive the wreck) during summer break. She was born and raised on a colony world that lost contact with Earth near the beginning of the collapse and was only rediscovered about ten years ago. In the meantime, the colony lost whatever industrial base it had and reverted to somewhere between the Stone Age and the Iron Age. They are a planet of farmers, hunters, and mystics. This character is an animist, believing that everything from the smallest rock to the universe in toto has a spirit that can be appeased, angered, and bargained with. She has a cheery disposition, is a wonderful cook, and can kill a person five ways without even touching them. Her field of study is agricultural science. Her goal is to return home with her degree and help bring her people up into the second century.

I suppose there is one last core character: the ship itself. It was a GalNav battlecruiser in its previous life, whose name translates roughly as "The Upraised Primary Brachiating Limb of the Adamant." The ship possesses an advanced artificial intelligence and is capable of running the entire ship autonomously. It was at the final battle against the Gillig 800 years ago, and from the condition it is in when discovered, it didn't fare very well. The AI has no conscious memory of the battle, her part in it, or how she came to be where she is when found. This may be significant. Both the artificial personality and the nanotech auto-repair system are lost technologies in the modern era, making the ship invaluable if the right people got their hands on her. The AI does have emotional responses. She was designed to be fatalistically co-dependent on her captain.